Best Art School With a Twist (2011)

No accreditation, no degrees, no pay, no tuition — the only thing you have to shell out for is your drinks. Run out of the top floor of the Mountain Bar, Chinatown's legendary Mountain School of Arts attracts a special variety of students, mostly from Europe, who want to come to Los Angeles to study, but perhaps aren't as interested in the credentials and limitations of the professional programs on the other side of downtown. The Mountain School was founded by artists Piero Golia and Eric Wesley, neither of whom attended graduate school. They intended MSA to be a new model for the L.A. art grad school, and to create their own mafia to compete with the other grad schools in town. The founders are very careful to correct you if you call it an alternative, as MSA sees itself not as an alternative but an equal to its more traditional competitors. Except for the teachers and founders buying their guests drinks, the school is run without cost with help from volunteers (myself included), and still manages to get some of the best artists and curators in the city and abroad, from artists Paul McCarthy and Thomas Demand to international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. 473 Gin Ling Way, Chinatown; themountainschoolofarts.org.